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Jonas nods. “That’s great news. Rules out a gold digger right from the get-go. Gotta love that.” His daughter stirs in his arms and he pulls a bottle out of his backpack.
I don’t know how the man does it. Raising two kids without their mom, and he’s never caught without a diaper, a bottle, a toy, or any of the other shit that little ones require.
He crosses the room, holding the baby out to me. “Can you hold Cece? I gotta take a leak,” he says, thrusting her into my arms without waiting for my answer.
As he does, her bottle slips from her mouth, falling to the floor with a thud, and she wails like a klaxon horn.
“Jesus, Rake. You gotta keep the bottle in her mouth,” Jonas calls over his shoulder.
I balance her into the crook of my elbow with one arm and grab the bottle from the floor with the other. The minute it’s back in her mouth, the screaming ceases.
Thank fucking God.
I look down at her angelic face. Nobody knows this, but I am a sucker for babies. I may give Jonas shit about not wanting to hold his kids, but truth is, I enjoy it. “Hey, now I know why babies are fat. You just have to keep feeding them to keep them quiet.”
Tyler’s watching me from across the room. “I’m not sure that’s true, man. They store fat or some shit. Like for their growing brains.”
What? How the hell does Tyler know anything about babies?
He sees the skepticism in my eyes. “It’s true. I read it somewhere. Go ahead and Google it.”
I’m not going to Google anything about fucking babies.
But I might Google Petal Parker, since a text from Vince just arrived, informing that me I’m meeting her tomorrow morning for coffee.
6
RAKE
“Vince,she’s a no-show. I told you this would happen.”
Waste of my damn time.
Vince presses his lips together. He’s been doing that a lot. Yeah, I know I’m getting on his last nerve but for cripes’ sake, he’s getting on mine.
“I confirmed with Petal this morning. She’s just late, Rake,” he says, craning his neck toward the Starbucks’ door.
“Look, she doesn’t want to go out with me anymore than I want to go out with her. I don’t know why you can’t just let us off the hook. Hell, tell the team she and I went out already, quietly and privately. Our secret. No one will know but us.”
He sips his tea with milk. So gross. “It doesn’t work that way, Vince. Oh, hey! Here she is.” He jumps to his feet and extends a hand to our date.
I say ‘our date’ because he set it up and insisted on coming. He doesn’t trust me enough to follow through.
“Petal, so nice to see you again,” he says, all obsequious and shit. He pulls out a chair for her and pushes it back in onceshe’s seated. For good measure, he throws up an eyebrow while glaring at me to let me know that next time, I’d better be the one getting up off my ass to help the lady sit.
The thing is, Petal looks like the last thing in the world she wants is someone to help her into her chair. She starts to tap her foot as soon as she’s seated, clearly more annoyed over this whole thing than even I am.
I appreciate the solidarity.
She drops her backpack on the floor and puts her arms on the table, leaning forward. “What can I do for you gentlemen? This meeting was clearly urgent.”
She looks from one of us to the other, waiting for a good answer, like a pissed off schoolteacher. Jesus. She’s hard core.
I like that.
Vince laughs, a little nervously. He has as much at stake here as I do, I suppose. If he can’t prove to the Aftershocks powers-that-be that he made a good faith effort to straighten out my ‘dismal reputation,’ as he calls it, not only do I get booted from the team, but he also loses his job.
Theoretically.
